1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a medical-information display apparatus and a medical-information display method each configured to be used when reading a medical image, and particularly relates to display of medial images to be used for comparative image reading.
2. Description of the Related Art
According to conventional image reading of medical images, image reading is performed in many cases by comparing a medical image taken by a present examination with a medical image taken by the another examination. When performing such comparative image reading of medical images, an image reading person selects, from among medical images taken through other examinations, a medical image to be compared (hereinafter, a “comparison subject image”) with a medical image to be read (hereinafter, a “reading subject image”).
As a method of selecting a comparison subject image, for example, there is a method that a medical information apparatus displays thumbnails of a plurality of medical images that has been already taken by categorizing them with respect to attribution information, such as, examination date, modality (image diagnostic apparatus), and/or examination portion, and then an image reading person selects a comparison subject image from among the medical images of the displayed thumbnails (for example, see JP-A 2006-6671 (KOKAI)).
Usually, according to the method of displaying thumbnails of medical images, while thumbnails of medical images are displayed in a plurality of areas categorized with respect to attribution information, each of the areas is often reduced in size and displayed due to the display area that a medical information apparatus has. For this reason, in order to select a comparison subject image, an image reading person needs to repeat operations of developing each of the reduced areas, confirming whether the developed area includes a desired comparison subject image, and displaying the desired comparison subject image if included, or further developing and confirming another area if not included.
Consequently, according to the method, a number of steps need to be carried out until a comparison subject image is selected, and a user request to select a comparison subject image simply cannot be satisfied. Moreover, even if categorized areas are not reduced in size, the image reading person needs to expend much time and effort in order to find a comparison subject image from among all images included in the categorized areas.